Are Chimpanzees Self-Aware?

Awareness is a private affair. For instance, I can’t say for sure whether the other customers in the coffee shop where I’m sitting are conscious in the same way that I am. Perhaps instead they are zombies, doing a good impression of acting like self-aware human beings.

By talking to each other, we can quickly disregard this possibility. When it comes to animals, however, the jury is out. Is a chimpanzee self-aware? How about a cow? An insect?

This is not idle speculation. These questions matter. Our moral intuitions are based on the assumption that the person we are interacting with is consciously aware. And our legal system is imbued with the notion that consciousness matters. If we were to find that another animal species had a consciousness very similar to that of humans, then it may be remiss of us not to extend the same rights and protections to that species.

Recently, a prominent group of neuroscientists signed a declaration stating that several non-human animal species are conscious. They reasoned that many mammals share brain structures – the thalamus, neocortex – that are involved in consciousness in humans, and display similar behavioral repertoires, such as attentiveness, sleep and capacity for decision-making. Therefore it is more likely than not that they have a similar consciousness.

While this seems intuitive, we need to stop and examine their reasoning. It all comes down to the kind of consciousness we are talking about. No one doubts, for example, that animals have periods of both sleep and wakefulness. What is at issue is whether they are aware in the same way that you and I are aware when we are awake.

Imagine you are in the cinema, engrossed in the latest blockbuster. There’s a good chance (especially if the film is any good) that while you are experiencing the film, you are not aware that you are experiencing the film. “Meta”-awareness is absent. Now imagine that you are condemned to spend the rest of your life without meta-awareness, continuously engrossed in the film of your own life. I’d wager it wouldn’t be much of an existence; as Socrates suggested, the unexamined life is not worth living.

Whether or not animals have this capacity for meta-awareness is unclear. Without the ability to report mental states, it is notoriously difficult to assess. But one particularly promising test involves judgments of control, or “agency”. Consider playing an arcade game after the money has run out – at some point, you realize that rather than steering your digital car through the streets of Monte Carlo, your efforts at the wheel are having no effect whatsoever. This realization – that you are no longer in control - is known as a judgment of agency, and may be intimately linked to meta-awareness.

In a recent study conducted in Kyoto, Japan, researchers asked whether chimpanzees could make judgments of agency. The task was to move a computer cursor to bump into another target displayed on the screen. The twist was that another decoy cursor was also present on the screen, whose movements were replayed from a previous trial. Thus the chimpanzee had control of one of the cursors, but not the other, even though visually they were identical. After the trial ended, the animals were trained to indicate the cursor that they had been controlling. All three chimpanzees correctly indicated this “self” cursor around 75% of the time. As the experimenters note, “Because both the self- and distractor cursor movements were produced by the same individual, the movements were presumably indistinguishable to a third person (and to the experimenters), who passively observed the display.” In other words, the only way to do the task is to monitor internal states, which is a pre-requisite for meta-awareness.

Judgments about another species’ consciousness should not be taken lightly. In particular, we should be careful about what kind of consciousness we are talking about. The kind that matters most from a moral and legal perspective is the capacity to be aware of internal states and intentions. Initial evidence suggests that some animals, particularly the great apes, may have this higher-order reflective capacity. This should give us greater pause for thought than the presence of primary or phenomenal consciousness in lower animals.

... while I agree we should have respect towards animals and treat them 'ethically' I don't believe in extending rights to them for one reason:

In this universe there is limited resources, and if we had not evolved they would have died out with the burning out of our sun. Human beings (their descendants) are the only chance that we will survive the running out of the suns fuel in the future, no animal has a chance against it except those who posses human to greater then human sapience.

While these moral questions are interesting, survival takes precedence over values when push comes to shove.

All animals are basically invalids compared to even the dumbest human beings. Now this doesn't mean animals don't have unique abilities or talents that shouldn't be investigated. But they simply cannot model the world like us at all, if they could they would have and culture as sophisticated as ours. No animals have truly built any kind of sapient like civilization. They don't live in towns or have any sophisticated tool making and agriculture where they pass on information from one generation to the next even at the level of tribes people we find in remote places.

i believe that every animal, insect -- any living thing that reproduces, has a brain, and requires oxygen to survive -- are all conscious. And they all have behaviors specific to their culture which they carry out, and survival instincts to ensure their species continue. They're programmed much like humans (carry out similar functions and habits) but just on smaller scales. These other species just happen to be inferior to humans because of their natural design -- they can only evolve so much; whereas humans have involved much faster and more intelligently.

Apparently, whichever "anonymous" wrote that animals are "invalids", and only humans will inherit the future, HAS to be a completely urban individual, totally dependent(and helpless without) modern technology, and also TOTALLY inexperienced with real, actual, interactions with animals of ANY kind! The specie's arrogance and egotism(and ignorance) of the comments above are WHY we have so many problems on this planet! Only someone with little REAL experience(engendering a total lack of respect) with the other animals we share this planet with could have this terribly narrow(and incorrect) perspective. Did you live closely with animals(especially wild ones perfectly adapted to their environments), you would quickly realize just how SUPERIOR they are in many ways to humans. Humans have high technology and intellect, but those are REGULARLY trumped in survival situations with animals and the environment! And our technological abilities and high intellect may be the eventual cause of our own self-inflicted extinction--and just how clever is that, in the long run? There are species that have survived MILLIONS of years longer than we have, and will still be here long after we've polluted or overused the planet's ability to support us humans--we very well are LIKELY to be one of the shortest(as well as most destructive) -lived species the earth has ever produced! I suggest this person go live(without artificial civilized support provided by others) for a little while in the wilderness, and they will find out just who REALLY is an INVALID!!!

Cows are conscious, pigs are conscious so are many other meat products which society consumes daily by the tonnes. I'm not a vegetarian...but you don't have to be when you hear about huge meat recalls; the health of humans are paramount, however the end results for the animals are just as devastating, I think.

While experiments in which primates (chimps, gorillas) have been taught sign language have at times proven controversial, IT WOULD FASCINATE ME and I would imagine a host of others if in such experiments chimps/gorillas were found capable of learning "emotional state words" -- that is "I happy", "I sad", "You tired", "You grumpy" and so forth.

I wouldn't be surprised if such studies have already been done somewhere, but I've never run into any literature about attempting to teach chimps/gorillas these kind of words.

It would seem to me that if a chimp/gorilla could be proven to understand such words describing "emotional state" that would go a long way to prove that at least they are capable of self-awareness.

I'm a Catholic priest and over the years I've reviewed several documentaries which have dealt with studying the intelligence of various animals:

This would be a fascinating area of study for anyone. I'm just wondering if this kind of study regarding trying to teach animals "emotional state words" has already been done and if so what have been the results.